


late summer, early autumn

by astersandstuffs



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, Future Fic, Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 17:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11361744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astersandstuffs/pseuds/astersandstuffs
Summary: [??:??] Do you want to hear a story, Iwa-chan?Message failed to send.[??:??] There were two boys. Neither knew who’d found the other first.Message failed to send.In the year 2058, journalist Oikawa Tooru still believes in long forgotten folktales and superstitions (but maybe he's just obsessed with finding one childhood ghost in particular).





	late summer, early autumn

**Author's Note:**

> _endless_ thanks to [Kat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miah_Kat/pseuds/Miah_Kat), [Jazz](http://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostardust/), [Dawn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/eccentrick/), and [French](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Frenchibi/), who’ve helped me with this fic, writing in general, and just being really wonderful friends. Kat beta’d this and she's responsible for the plot making any kind of sense; Jazz and Dawn chipped in a lot, too; and French, your messages still make me cry, okay.
> 
> as this is set in the 2050's - some things change, some things stay the same. i did a lot of research but i've also taken some creative liberties. that said, feel free to suggest fixes if you find mistakes ^^

 

_“Here’s the thing—humans are capable of haunting, too.”_

 

 

* * *

 

 

It is the night of June 19th, 2058, when Tooru overhears the local tall tale. At 11:30PM on a Wednesday, the official start of nightshift lunch hour, crisp footsteps and conversing voices already echo along the glass-walled corridors. He breezes through the organized chaos, picking up on the _how are you_ ’s and _did you hear_ ’s, the _we need to talk_ ’s and other things in-between as usual, and catches a different sort of whispers in the wake of it.

_“It's that time of the year again, isn't it?”_

_“My condolences for him. It must be terribly lonely.”_

_“Bah. What are you all talking about?_ He _doesn't even exist!”_

He falters a bit in his steps, because _oh how he’d like to learn this one even more_ , out of every other near extinct folklore and myths and superstitions. _Something you've been waiting for_ , but he's still too new to have pried into the specifics. Instead, Tooru signs off the missive he’s been typing, all formal by necessity, and pockets his phone. Head tips back up as he keeps the swiftness of all public movements, smiles and waves mustered for the passing acquaintances. Outside and all around, Tokyo burns dazzling for the darkening sky.

“There’s our boy wonder,” Hanamaki drawls as Tooru walks to their spot in the cafeteria. At Tooru's obvious lack of dinner tray, he clicks his tongue, gives a pointed nod to the packaged milk bread on the table, and declares how Tooru owes him _another_ trip to an izakaya. With a grin to match Hanamaki's, _thank you_ ’s between them hidden in playful taunts, Tooru settles across from him and Sawamura.

“What's with June nineteenth?” Tooru asks, because he can't quite help it after a year flitting about interviews and stakeouts and articles of _the normal sorts_ —classified and more _thrilling_ cases aside. This is one of the reasons he’d agreed to Ushijima's offer, after all, albeit something on the personal side, and he wouldn't have set foot in Shiratorizawa if it couldn't provide him some fun.

After a clap of prayer (more for ingrained traditions than any kind of spiritual, this turn of the century), he opens the plastic wrap, tears off a bite-sized piece of the pastry for himself, and waits with all restlessness. Because _stories to be discovered_ might be the only thing Tooru can bear to have patience so long. At once, he recomposes himself when his fingers start their fidgeting, nails alternatively drumming on the table in a show of how impatient he is.

Sawamura chuckles. “I knew you were going to ask that.”

“Dai-chan,” Tooru lilts, and the other man just rolls his eyes at the trivial flirtations. “You’ve been here for as long as I have, so surely this was news to you both as well?”

“It was,” Hanamaki affirms, cheeks full of yakisoba. He points a pair of chopsticks at Tooru. “But unlike you, we didn’t have a special case to obsess over.”

“I heard it was a demanding one,” Sawamura says.

“Quite so. But nothing Oikawa-san couldn’t handle.”

“Oh? Aside from your sprained wrist and the bruises around your neck like a chokehold?”

He itches to tug the collar of his shirt higher, but resists, because Hanamaki only knows from virtue of _best friends_ and _sharing living spaces_. In turn, Tooru gives up something closer to a smile, for once neither entirely wry nor defensive. Hanamaki sounds like he couldn’t care for what answers or lies Tooru would supply, but he’s known him long enough to hear a friend speaking his worry instead of the lawyer in him making deductions. Frivolous as Tooru may be, and past a journalist simply valuing authenticity, he appreciates the gesture.

At the silent admission, the most Tooru might be able to give, Hanamaki returns to stab at his soppy noodles, looking bored like he’s too used to such things. Sawamura echoes the both of their thoughts, already sporting a parental sort of frown at twenty-seven, “Be less reckless, Oikawa.”

“If it’s any comfort to you, the guy’s going to be hospitalized for a month for fractured ribs.” Tooru waves with a flick of his wrist, _it’s not as bad as it looks_ , and promptly hides the faintest wince at the movement. “But nevermind that. June nineteenth—what is it?”

“The best investigative journalist in Minato, still fascinated by the likes of _ghost stories_?” Hanamaki smirks. “What would the world say?”

Tooru’s smile is just as sharp. “We always like to get the last laugh. And even ghosts have their stories.”

They do. Hanamaki won’t refute that, but their definitions of ghosts differ vastly.

He knows of Tooru’s one ghost, the childhood friend whose face he can’t sketch and proof of existence only within his memories—the main subject of his obsession, past every other astral thing. Passing it as a child’s loneliness and imagination, that Tooru was a _nutcase_ when they first met in college, he’d begun to tolerate, try to understand, when their friendship just bloomed terribly beautiful.

 _“You’ll drop dead if you care for the living and the dead at once,”_ he’d told Tooru and his frenzied searching. Ever insistent about things, Tooru wrapped up all his work and solved Hanamaki's cases that month, just to brag.

And far from a believer, Hanamaki tells the story anyway. He doesn’t pass the chance to entertain, witty and/or drawling intonation included, and he’s familiar with how some ghosts have the penchant to haunt.

“Well,” he begins, “it seems Shiratorizawa Corp.—or at least this building we’re in—has a resident ghost of its own.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

As _Tokyo’s tallest occupied building_ , Shiratorizawa Corp.’s headquarters isn't a place for the wary of heights.

It’s a fortress of glass and towering steel that marks its territory not by impressive light shows, but by its sheer monstrous presence and the power it holds in its inner workings. _“We’ll bring change to one of Japan’s strongest and most influential conglomerate,”_ had been the offer corporate heir Ushijima Wakatoshi stubbornly approached Tooru with (certainly more than a mere year before; Tooru’s just as, if not more, stubborn), but that’s the least redeeming feature of it all.

Because its glass walls might be as well the most impenetrable barrier around, but at night, _a world lights up_ down below, a galaxy on the ground when stargazing just results in the endless navy blue overhead. City lights glitter and wink like star systems through the mist lingering at this height, colors from merrier festivities bleed in and make nebulas out of ordinary clouds—a modest semblance of the real things (as much as pictures and movies can show, anyway), but Tooru’s petty enough to demand nightshift in the higher floors’ office, and it is this view shimmering beyond the glass he’s skirting his fingers over.

He saunters down the last hallway accessible by the elevators, twirling the set of keys he’d swiped from a drunk Kamasaki (and _how strange_ it is that some doors don’t require key cards or surely more advanced identifications), humming a lighthearted tune for spirits to catch and echo.

The topmost floor is sparse during the day, desolate by midnight. On such late hours past the end of June 19th, 2058, Oikawa Tooru breaks into the metropolis’ highest rooftop in search for a ghost.

Past any unearthly phenomenon, the wind greets him first in howling pleasantries, ruffling his hair and tossing a pesky tie over one shoulder. Tooru raises an arm to his head like a shield, squints in the wake of it, and treads on regardless. When he’s at the precipice, he loosens his tie, the shirt collar that’s strangling his bruises, and takes a seat on heavens’ perch. He reminds himself to breathe, when the sprawl of lights and _life_ proves to be even more, _well_ , breathtaking.

The cold, fresh air only helps so much to return him to his senses. He clutches at the concrete ledge on either side, his sole anchor if he were to lose balance, but he's just pulled by the gravity of it all anyway, body tipping forward and head hunching down in the face of such spaces. Closing his eyes, he lets his heart rate settle to the traffic and the gravelly winds.

There’s an odd noise to this particular gust—like stomping footfalls, and Tooru snaps his eyes open and dodges a beat too late—

Someone grabs onto his upper arms and hauls him backward. Tooru twists in the hold, putting both arms between them. But they don’t dive to attack.

They— _he_ —lands on his back, Tooru on top of him, and he only squeezes tighter, wrapping him in the most awkward and suffocating hug. Shoes scrape against concrete as they try to gain footing. Tooru elbows him on the ribs as hard as he can in the confines, drawing a pained grunt. He’s less than a second away from doing the same to his jaw when they’re turned over, the man freeing him, lifting him up by the collar of his shirt.

“What the fuck,” he exclaims, eyes blown wide in a mix of terrified and righteous anger. “ _What the fuck_. I don’t know what your problems are but jumping off the roof—” He stutters to a stop and the hands holding Tooru up grasps more tightly, painfully.

And Tooru can’t help it. Even as he’s shaking from the rust of adrenaline, he chuckles, more of a breathless snort than anything graceful, and it turns into a laugh when the other man just stares at him, stunned.

“I wasn’t thinking of anything like that,” Tooru finally reassures him, because he does look like he’d have a heart attack sometime soon and Tooru isn’t that cruel to strangers. “I was just...enjoying the view.”

He didn't expect the man to scowl. He releases Tooru’s shirt, making to stand as Tooru lets out an _ow!_ when his back hits the coarse floor. The man digs out a cigarette pack from his trousers’ pockets, hands trembling, well-suppressed but noticeable to Tooru.

Tooru gets up on his feet. His sprained wrist throbs after their tussle. “What, so quick to abandon your rescue mission?””

“Shut up,” the man mutters, an unlit cigarette between the lips. “Your voice is annoying.”

“Oh wow, that was _inexplicably_ rude. Have we even met before, Mr. Grump?”

“Mister—that’s a _shitty_ nickname.”

Tooru smiles, saccharine like a lure. “Won’t you let me know what name to use then?”

The man regards him, gaze flitting up and down, staying longer at his tinted neck than necessary; he scrutinized Tooru’s face the most, and he doesn’t try to hide it. “Iwaizumi,” he introduces himself as such. Playing with a lighter, he lights it only for the wind to snuff it out and another flame to reignite in its place, yet to burn the cigarette’s end. “And stop that,” Iwaizumi adds, the glare that softened as he looked Tooru over now returning with intensity.

“Not even a full name. And stop _what_ , exactly?”

“That smile. It’s even more irritating than your over-friendly voice from before.”

Tooru feels the manifested guise flicker. Iwaizumi brings the lighter close enough to kindle, takes a short drag of smoke and tar, and keeps Tooru in his peripherals as he exhales, wind inevitably extinguishing the rest of it. His turquoise button-up is untucked halfway and sloppy, the hem of it tossed back by billowing currents. At such _great heights_ , his stance tells of an ease like he might be unbothered by the potential drop, but still annoyingly professional, Tokyo’s skyline at his back. Such _cliché_ image, yet Tooru begrudgingly thinks it’s a shame not to preserve this in photographs.

But Oikawa Tooru is not some apparition. _Look at me._ “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Iwaizumi.” Smiles, and head tilted just so; arms open and inviting for a moment, enticing by its impermanence. _Go with the flow, and make it yours._

At this, Iwaizumi just frowns, too-high forehead all wrinkled and corners of lips arching downward (and it does not baffle Tooru, _not at all_ , how his falsities only pry such genuine responses).

“Oikawa—a name for a name,” Tooru says, perhaps, admittedly, on the fringe of _blurting out_. “I’m a journalist for this company.”

Iwaizumi fiddles the cigarette. _Someone who can’t keep still_ , Tooru thinks _._ “I guess I can see why.”

There’s a sort of _curious_ to his words. With a click, Iwaizumi finds a fire to cup in his hand, but the winds still say otherwise before neither of them can taste ashes.

Tooru doesn’t drop the façade, just to rile him up further (and if anything else, Iwaizumi’s frown is a little _funny_ ). “What are you doing out here this late?”

“Just here for a smoke.”

“With this wind speed? You could barely get a drag before it went out.”

“That’s the point,” says Iwaizumi. Cigarette halted between his thumb and forefinger, he angles it for Tooru to see the dying embers and the ghostly smoke trail of small things burned too quickly swept away. “This place won’t let me smoke. But it’s worth staying out here for the fresh air and the view.”

“That's kinda a silly endeavor.”

“Guess who's being rude this time?”

Somewhere along their conversation, Iwaizumi's hands have ceased their tremors. Tooru tilts his head to the side. “You wrestled me down when I was _innocently_ enjoying such views.”

“Yeah,” Iwaizumi concedes, a tad embarrassed from the hint of pink dusting the tips of his ears. He tucks the lighter away. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

“Oh, you do have common decency after all.”

He snorts. “I stopped a person I _thought_ was about to jump off the roof. Sorry for trying to be a _decent_ human being.”

Tooru just hums, to that. He glances around the rooftop for places where spirits might hide or lie in wait—undeniably, he’s been _distracted_ by all the novel, pretty sceneries, the fresh if thin air, the lull of _midnight excursion_ —and Iwaizumi follows his gaze. They peer at one another, stubborn enough to insist on secrecy. He places his hands in his pockets as the cold starts to numb. “Do you come here often?”

“When work doesn’t pile up too high,” Iwaizumi says. “I’d never seen you around, though. I was taking a stroll when I spotted you.”

“Isn’t the door always locked?”

“Well, why are _you_ here, then?”

Tooru brushes off the dust clinging to him. Over the looming skyscrapers, he sets his sight on the horizon and its artificial luster, tinged golden like daytime might never set completely. Iwaizumi’s eyes on his back, Tooru strides past, reclaims his perch on the edge, and thinks to beckons a fellow trespasser to join. He doesn’t have to turn around, when shoes scuff behind him as Iwaizumi comes closer.

“I’m looking for someone,” Tooru tells him as Iwaizumi settles a few spaces over, distances between them calculated for two strangers and far enough from the ledge so he can cross his legs. Tooru lets his feet glide on air. “Have you heard of any ghost sighting here?”

“What kind of journalist are you?” asks Iwaizumi, but it is more inquisitive than any sort of ridicule. Like overridden by _second thoughts_ , he flits his faze back to the panorama in front like he might shake off something incessant. “No,” he continues, to actually answer the question. “Haven’t heard of that.”

“A _curious_ one.”

“ _Nosy_ , you mean.”

“Hey, it’s our job to poke our noses where they don't belong,” Tooru corrects, all _breezy_ about it. “It must be something, this ghost, for people here to make a fuss about it when no one believes in such things anymore.”

“Hm. My grandmother does.”

“Oh?”

“Spirits, mountain gods. She brings offerings to the shrine on the hill near her village.”

“At her old age, I presume? She must be strong.”

“She is.” Iwaizumi smiles at this, a gentle curve of the lips that reaches his eyes in a slight squint, and it’s _almost_ better than the frown. “I try to do it for her whenever I visit, and the village kids are happy to help her now.”

Grimacing, Iwaizumi grinds out the cigarette’s lit end, as if reminded of a grandmother’s scolding.

“And do you?” Tooru asks. “Believe in them.”

“...I guess I do, in some ways. You do as well.”

“Who knows? I could be drunk right now or just following a dare from questionable friends.”

“You said _someone_ , like they do exist and you’d like to interview them.”

Tooru leans back on the concrete, the grainy texture imprinting on the soft of his palms. “ _Interview with a ghost_ ,” he tests the sound of it, preening at a sky without stars to spare, finding the moon a lonely orbiter. ( _What’s on the other side of the veil?_ ) “Oh, how would that look on the headlines! We’d have spotlights on different creatures!”

“Shouldn’t you be looking for your ghost, then?”

“I’m talking to one.”

Iwaizumi frowns. “I’m not a ghost.”

“With that scowly face, you’d scare children as well as any other,” Tooru insists.

“Are you really this crappy.”

“ _Rude_ ,” Tooru sticks out his tongue at him. Iwaizumi’s face twitches like he’s torn between feeling bewildered and exasperated. _How expressive._ “What do you do, Iwa-chan?”

“I’m— _Iwa_ —do you _want_ me to hit you? Are you actually a child?”

“Such a cute name balances out your grumpiness.”

Iwaizumi breathes in, a model poster for _count and keep calm_. “It’s too late for this shit,” he sighs out with a drag of a palm down his face. He props an elbow on his knee, cupping the side of his cheek as he gazes down to follow the winding train tracks of the recently developed nightrails, ready to accommodate Tokyo stragglers to their destinations when normal trains have stopped running past midnight. “Entomology,” he tells Tooru. In these lights, his eyes glisten a vivid green.

When Tooru scrunches up his nose, Iwaizumi huffs out a small, amused laugh. “Not fond of bugs?”

“They’re weird,” Tooru just reasons, the same excuse he’d used when he was five; when a boy, Hajime, also five (but blessed with a month head-start), itching to run just as bad, offered to show him hidden places in the likes of home backyards and garden parks. _They’re weird_ , Tooru had complained in responses to Hajime’s _Wanna catch bugs together?_ , but he’d reached out anyway, all held hands and laced fingers, because _together_ sounded even better.

“Says the person who’d like to meet a ghost,” Iwaizumi counters, “and _different creatures_ , which I can only assume means other kinds of _youkai_. Their appearances aren’t exactly flattering.”

A ringtone plays, vague and muffled. When Iwaizumi fetches his phone, its screen alight with a name and a picture too far to identify, Tooru makes it out as a song of the J-Rock sorts from gods know how long ago. ( _Old man’s taste in music_ , Tooru thinks. Maybe they might find similarities in fondness for old and forgotten things.) Whoever is at the other end of the line yells in garbled statics, to which Iwaizumi just rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah, yeah.”

“That’s my ride,” Iwaizumi tells him, after the call’s ended.

“You don’t take the metro? And here I pegged you as an environmental friendly guy.”

“Why—nevermind.” Iwaizumi shakes his head, stands, and gathers the cigarette’s remains with him. He stares at it for a moment, realizing a point proven, and his lips purse in some sort of reluctant admittance. Tooru gives up a chuckles.

“Wait, that’s it?” Tooru calls after him as Iwaizumi makes his way toward the rooftop entrance. “No _‘bye-bye’_? No _‘see you later’_?”

“Get some sleep!” Iwaizumi shouts right back by the door. From where they are, one daring to teeter on the edge and another steady at the center, he doesn’t need to lower his sight to meet Tooru’s, and neither does Tooru have to look up. “Surely you can do better than those _terrible_ eye bags.”

Tooru gapes, and Iwaizumi might’ve huffed or snorted at that, judging by the hunch of his shoulders, distance and dim lighting blurring him into a distinct figure. He mashes his mouth shut a second later, determines not to lose (because he just has the _strangest_ urge to stay one step ahead of him, _keep up_ with him), and grins something cheeky.

“Nice to meet you, too, Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, facing away from a door that isn’t closed all the way, that's left slightly ajar just as when he’d stepped through.

He draws constellations out of city lights, crooked asteroid belts from the bright, coursing speckles of trains and autos, the Rainbow Bridge a neighboring galaxy. At 2AM, he sprawls on his back, makes two finger guns to frame the full moon in the upper corner of it, and doesn’t blink away the aftereffect of his gazing, letting flashes of colors smudge the sky-canvas as he hums along to the whispers of intangible things.

At 3AM, the _arguable_ end of _the witching hour_ , Tooru straightens his arms skyward, groaning at the stretch, and makes to his feet. When he goes through the door, he debates if it should stay open before deciding otherwise. Because if anyone wants to be here, if _Iwaizumi_ wants to find this place, he will find a way.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 **☆*:.｡.Tooru.｡.:*☆  
** [4:39] kenma (〃^∇^)ﾉ

 **kenma  
** [4:50] no

 **☆*:.｡.Tooru.｡.:*☆  
** [4:50] i haven't said anything yet ⊂(⊙д⊙)つ

 **kenma  
** [4:55] i’m busy

 **☆*:.｡.Tooru.｡.:*☆  
** [4:56] ????

 **kenma  
** [4:56] you're noisy

 **☆*:.｡.Tooru.｡.:*☆**  
[4:56] we’re texting!  
[4:57] wait was yesterday the midnight release of fhq 5  
[4:57] is that what this is  
[4:57] how could you

 **kenma  
** [5:09] hm

 **☆*:.｡.Tooru.｡.:*☆**  
[5:09] it's a short research  
[5:09] and it doesn't involve revealing people's deepest, dearest held secrets  
[5:10] which i know you hate  
[5:10] (it’s okay i know you don't hate me (◕◡◕✿)

 **kenma  
** [5:23] bye

 **☆*:.｡.Tooru.｡.:*☆  
** [5:25] ken-chan ｡･ﾟﾟ*(>д<)*ﾟﾟ･｡

 

 

* * *

 

 

 **☆*:.｡.Tooru.｡.:*☆**  
[6:07] no one will approach you for office gossip again i'm sorry (ノωヽ)  
[16:31] makki’s making apple pie ☆⌒(ゝ。∂)

 

 

* * *

 

 

 **kenma**  
[7:11] that wink is creepy  
[7:12] there’s 14 iwaizumis who ever have connections with shiratorizawa  
[7:12] i'll send you the files  
[7:13] go to bed tooru

 

 

* * *

 

 

 **Makki**  
[21:24] Oikawa go bake your own pies :p  
[21:27] Fuck  
[21:27] We live in the same apartment  
[21:27] Dont you dare  
[21:27] Im locking you out of the kitchen

 

 

* * *

 

 

When he wanders to the rooftop for his eighth visit, it is June 30th, 2058. Today’s forecast is a brief respite from _tsuyu_ , the rainy season, and so Tooru carries with him a six-pack, his work laptop, and a pair of binoculars hung on a silver chain around his neck. It is also on this day that he meets Iwaizumi for the second time.

“Oh,” comes his voice, a pitch of _déjà vu_ , “you're here again.”

Sitting against the wall by the door, Tooru turns up his nose only until he catches Iwaizumi over the rim of his glasses, his laptop whirring away on top of crossed legs. “Hi, Iwa-chan,” he sings back in greeting. He didn’t hear the door swung open, and he wonders if the surrounding noises and his hyper-focus on the task were enough to drown out the creaks of it.

Iwaizumi frowns. It hasn’t lost any of its amusing touch. “Are you working?”

Under the halogen lights circumventing the entrance on all four sides, Tooru can tell now that Iwaizumi is tired. Sunken cheeks, dark circles under his eyes, hint of a stubble. He has nothing as baseline comparisons, but these things jar a sense of familiarity.

“Nope,” Tooru says. He raises the half-empty can he’s been sipping at, his third one for the night, aware of the sticky sweetness above his upper lip (but he doesn’t mind not putting up a proper image around Iwaizumi) and grins with it, anyway. “I’m drinking _and_ working—or working and drinking. Let's go with the latter.”

“You’re gonna make a mess.”

“It’s _coffee_.” Tooru twists his wrist so Iwaizumi can better read the label. “I’m not actually _drinking_ drinking at work. Do you know how much precision my job requires?”

“All that caffeine and sugar isn’t any better.”

Tooru offers him a smile. “Iwa-chan, are you my mom?”

At the suggestion, the severe expression that comes over Iwaizumi’s features is enough to make Tooru reconsider. “Okay, sorry, sorry, you’re definitely not! I’ll lay off the caffeine,” he promises with a frantic nod, raising both hands to placate.

“I’m taking a walk,” Iwaizumi says, and goes to do just so, strides wide and quick-paced.

“Aren't you gonna keep me company?” Tooru hails after him, fully intent on teasing. “What kind of friend are you?!”

Iwaizumi ignores him, _blatantly so_. He half-jogs until he’s a few meters from the edge, slows down almost unnoticeably, and continues on parallel along it. Tooru watches him, wondering if he stays in the lab or does field work with how restless he is. He tastes a last mouthful of too-sweet coffee, mourns the rest he won’t drink tonight (or, well, he _could_ share. He bets Iwaizumi’s a _black coffee kind of guy_ , and getting to see his reactions is a strong temptation), and returns to hunching over the multitude of articles on his laptop.

The thought that’s pestered for the last week comes over him, for once— _maybe_ a couple of times—more compelling than exposing a covert abuse of power within a local hospital to watch the perpetrators fall into grave despair (oh how _exciting_ it is, to topple those who are so sure of their righteous, cheating selves from their rickety thrones). Tooru pulls up the files Kenma had sent, scans all fourteen profiles—seven of which he’d dug out himself—for the umpteenth time, and discovers no more than the last scrutiny. _Iwaizumi Akiyuki, Iwaizumi Hiroya, Iwaizumi Isao…_ They bear few resemblances to this Iwaizumi, and Tooru once again muses what it’d take to convince Kenma to comb through the entire country’s database.

He resumes work soon enough. The binoculars weigh down on their chains, the silver cold even through an hour-long contact with his skin. Night wind signals early autumn chill. Tooru holds back a bout of shiver.

Only when he hears footsteps does he look away. Against the immaculate black-tiled wall, Iwaizumi sits right around the corner, facing east instead of Tooru’s north.

“How’s the walk?” Tooru asks as Iwaizumi shifts to find a comfortable position, like he’s been looking forward the most to stretching his limbs from cramped office cubicles. But like most of Shiratorizawa, the Entomology department is generous about work spaces.

 _Who? Iwaizumi?_ At Tooru's inquiry, Shirofuku Yukie had tapped a pen to her chin, humming thoughtfully. _No, there's no one here by that name or funny frown. Did you mean the new guy Akaashi Keiji? Because he sometimes makes these ridiculous faces around Bokuto._

“I slipped and fell. Luckily, I was able to grip the ledge with one hand and climb back up.”

“You—” Tooru splutters. He scrambles to the other side, heart racing, and just finds Iwaizumi grinning playfully.

Tooru pouts all huffy and indignant in return. Iwaizumi just chuckles. Briefly, he thinks how he likes the sounds of it, light compared to his previous grumbles and soothing as his smile.

As Iwaizumi goes to flick his lighter afterward, the low hum of Tooru’s computer fills in the momentary hush, the feedback from the digital keyboard only palpable to his fingers. Tooru isn’t paying much attention to it, gazes caught around the corner; when his cigarette goes out after three drags, Iwaizumi doesn't light it again. He cranes his neck, eyes flickering to Tooru and his stooped form (and, briefly, he opens his mouth, as if about to chide him—“ _that's hurting your back_ ”—but he bites back the words), the slew of documents he’s not quite lost in anymore, the unopened cans of _Boss Milk-iri_ , and settling on the swaying binoculars.

“Are those…”

“Hm?” Tooru says, just to cover up how embarrassingly fast he replies. “Oh, this”—he grasps the binoculars, straightening in his seat and suppressing a wince at the ache in his spine—“well, Iwa-chan, this here is a pair of binoculars—”

“I know what binoculars are. Why did you bring them?”

“It gets boring here!” Tooru gestures with a wide spread of his arms. “The view is _wonderful_ and all, and you never really lose the thrill of being this high up, but there’s only so much staring and contemplating my existence in the universe I can do.”

“ _No one_ told you to come here,” Iwaizumi remarks. “If you have free time to spare being bored, you should consider spending it on sleep. Your eyes look like a panda’s.”

“As pandas are disgustingly cute and popular, I’ll take that as a compliment.” Iwaizumi must’ve been building immunity _very_ fast, because he barely bats an eyelid when Tooru sticks out his tongue (though his right eye does twitch a bit). “Besides, it’ll be cool,” Tooru continues on, cradling the binoculars to his chest. “It’s like stargazing from the top of a hill, only we’d be spying on people—and there’s a lot to see from this height. I used them to keep note on a drug cartel near my house when I was a kid.”

“I don’t even know which dubious part I should point out first.”

“ _Fine_. I was eighteen and just moved to Shinjuku for Uni.”

“Wait”—Iwaizumi holds up a hand—“did you say _we_? Before that.”

“Hm? Oh, yeah. You know how best friends spy on their enemy and be salty and judge them together?” Peering around the corner and up in Iwaizumi’s space, Tooru grins, a peace sign at the ready. “We’re gonna do that,” he announces.

“We're not _best friends_ ,” Iwaizumi insists. “We're not even _friends_.”

“ _Mean_ , Iwa-chan.” Tooru huffs, crossing his arms. “Take it as a bonding activity, then.”

“Why’d I want that.”

“Because I’m a much better company than walking around in circles and trying to smoke.”

“I beg to differ.”

Tooru dangles the binoculars, smiling with a sliver of teeth, and watches how, despite the downturned mouth, Iwaizumi acquiesce by a frown easing off his features.

“No spying on _people_ , creep.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“You know, when you said _‘bonding activity’_ so...enthusiastically, I didn’t expect to waste an hour waiting.”

“Hmm, yeah,” Tooru says. _I’ll break you_ , he thinks of one Hoori Hospital’s current Dean of Medicine, a well-known philanthropist with buried agendas on organ trafficking and involuntary drug trials, possibly among many other things, and the new leads he’s found taunt him. “Ten more minutes,” he adds, when he realizes he might’ve said it aloud.

“Alright, that’s it,” Iwaizumi sighs out, and it should’ve been enough of a warning. When Iwaizumi leans over and pushes the laptop shut, the sound Tooru lets out is frankly undignified.

“I was working!”

“You were burning your eyes dry. I don’t think it’s going to help solving whatever this is.”

Groaning, Tooru makes grabby hands at Iwaizumi as he takes the device hostage. Around the corner, Iwaizumi’s cigarettes are gathered into a pile, around two packs’ worth, most but not all relatively intact. He inhales, the remains of smoke and burnt paper an acrid sting. “Well, someone else’s been burning things,” he mumbles.

“Do you want to do it or not?”

“Careful, Iwa-chan. That sounds kinda dirty.”

“Why haven’t I kicked you off the ledge yet.”

Tooru gasps. “You wouldn’t dare!”

But he perks up at the reminder, anyway. Fumbling with the binoculars, he lifts the chains over his head, blinks away traces of bleariness (and wonders if he’s developing resistance to caffeine), and offers them to Iwaizumi. “Here. Take a look with it—you can choose our stakeout spot.”

Iwaizumi holds the binoculars with gentle hands like they’re some sort of a fragile treasure he’s taking care not to break. (Maybe he’s taken Tooru’s little anecdote to heart more than he lets on.) His eyebrows knit into a frown, more of the confused sort than displeased, and he goes to look through the lenses.

“There’s nothing,” he concludes.

“See, I—huh?”

“There’s nothing,” Iwaizumi says, handing the binoculars back to Tooru. “It was...normal?”

“Oh,” Tooru breathes out, when he checks and sees the same. “I cleaned it today and forgot…”

“...to put the lenses back?”

“Yeah.”

“Unbelieveable,” says Iwaizumi.

“Are you _laughing_ at me?” Tooru shrieks, pointing an accusatory finger.

Iwaizumi _is_ , shoulders shaking and lips stretched wide from the force of it, and when Tooru just pouts at him, cheeks puffed and _just a tad_ burning, he laughs even louder.

“You’re a slob, aren’t you?”

“Excuse you, I’m _perfect_.”

Iwaizumi gestures to the mess of aluminum cans and milk bread wrapper. “And the one time you tried to clean…”

“The lenses were _not_ opaque,” is Tooru’s defense. “I probably left it on my desk.” He fixes his shirt as he stands, because he’s not _disheveled_ like the caveman Iwaizumi is. “Let’s go get it.”

“No thanks.” Iwaizumi waves a dismissive hand. “I’ll wait here.”

“Are you going to let me traverse the dark hallways alone?”

“Yes?”

“But it’s 2AM! There might be _dangerous_ things going on.”

“Oh, gods.”

“What if someone jumps me?” Tooru muses. “I’m too pretty to die.”

“You’re an adult man over one hundred and eighty centimeters with athletic physique—”

“—and devastatingly handsome!”

“—and _incurably_ annoying. A sane person would return you within five minutes and then turn themselves in to get rid of you.”

“ _Rude_.” (You’re still here, Tooru thinks.) “How can I be sure you’ll still be here when I come back? Let’s just go together, and we can show each other our workplaces while we’re at it.”

With either possibility he imagines Iwaizumi would roll his eyes, or snort, all exasperated but inexplicably patient. But when he frowns, it’s only with plain confusion, like he’s trying to remember but grasping at loose ends, and it doesn’t make Tooru feel satisfied in any way.

“No,” Iwaizumi says. “I don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to.”

Tooru wets his lips, bites at the lower flesh. “How about just keeping watch by the door? In case I trip down the stairs, because I can't always be as graceful as I look.”

_Take it—make fun of me as usual._

Hands curl into fists. Iwaizumi's shoulders hunch, almost defensive, and his eyes drifts unfocused somewhere far behind Tooru like he's worrying himself over something only he can see (or maybe it’s the things he can't see). “I want to stay here.”

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, deliberately, “why can't you leave here?”

At this, their gazes snap align. “I don’t _want_ to,” Iwaizumi barks. “What the fuck is your problem?”

It's like standing on top of a frozen lake, the ice beneath his feet cracking and threatening to break, with how cold it's become in the span of a second. Tooru’s breaths come out in handfuls of clouds. “Okay,” he says, throwing both hands up. “Alright. If Iwa-chan is too scared to go, I guess we can just stay here.” He turns his nose up, huffing even as the cold nips at his skin and a tiny shiver makes its way into his voice. “Talk. Wallow in silence. Get to know each other.”

He lets the proposition hang between them, knows when it’s decided by the way Iwaizumi’s hands slowly unclench as he relaxes against his side of the wall, the line of his shoulders still tense, and he goes to do the same. Ahead in Tooru’s north, Tokyo Tower is slight with the fiery colors of a familiar and close star. Fixing his sight on it, he might convince himself it’s what chasing the cold away.

_What's your first name?_

_You first._

_Tooru. Oikawa Tooru._

_That's...a nice name._

_Oh, whoa. I didn't expect that from you._

_Shut up. A shitty person can have an objectively good name._

_I don't think that's an objective judgement, Iwa-chan—also, rude!_

_Okay. Why are you still up this late?_

_Wait, tell me your name first._

_Nah. Pass._

_Iwa-chan! That's unfair!_

But Iwaizumi dodges it, either way. To compromise, he gives Tooru two extra turns, which Tooru uses to ask about his grandmother and her village, the shrines and gods and spirits, and how Iwaizumi fit in all of those. (He’d been adventurous, scraped knees and knicks and scratches taken like trophies instead of a warning.) They find that they were both raised in Sendai, Miyagi. Iwaizumi’s grandmother lives in Yahiko. (Tooru doesn’t mention how there was no village left in central Japan by the year 2030, and it’s not because he wants to keep Iwaizumi’s smile as he talks about his summer vacations there.)

When he realizes Tooru has stretched two questions into a twenty minutes conversation, Iwaizumi retaliates, baiting Tooru with grins and half-hearted insults so he’d further elaborate his answers. _What was that bruise around your neck from before?_ He’d got into a scuffle with a perp. _And you lost?_ No! The other guy and his fractured ribs are enjoying some month-long stay in a prison's medical ward, thank you very much. _Huh. You look like a gorilla but maybe you aren't that skilled._ Hey—

Iwaizumi's favorite movie is the original 1954 _Godzilla_. (He likes monsters and mecha; _What a dork_ , Tooru thinks, quite endearingly.) Tooru’s is _E.T._ —both are so old it's a miracle they could watch them at all. Iwaizumi argues that it's not _that_ old (and Tooru knows a hundred plus years is surely _ancient_ , yet he wonders why, right now, he again doesn't dare mention it). Tooru had unearthed a copy of _E.T._ from his grandfather's attics.

On _the best season_ , Iwaizumi doesn't ponder long before he declares his choice. _Summer_ , he tells Tooru with a straight, calm face, like he might will it to be a universal fact, like he knows of Tooru's opposing answer.

Tooru tuts, chiding, but he tells his truth, _Winter_. Because summer is hot and sweaty and gross (Iwaizumi reminds him he has no right calling it that as he’s a gross slob himself; he doesn't have proof and is pleasantly ignored), and winter clothes have so many varieties, and isn't it _fun_ shoving freezing snow down your friends’ pants (at this point, Iwaizumi adds that Tooru has a terrible personality).

_So?_

_Yeah?_

_Why does Iwa-chan like summer? What's so good about it?_

(“It's that time of the year again, isn't it?”)

_...Iwa-chan?_

_I don’t want to._

He tells Iwaizumi about Hanamaki when the latter asks _“how do your friends even put up with you?”_ : how they'd pranked each other on a daily basis in college, that Makki's a _brilliant_ cook (but don't tell him Tooru says that) and a great lawyer with keen eyes for reading situations (though he's still figuring out how _people_ work, especially on the matter of _love_ ), and how they’d ended in the same firm but moved here together when Tooru accepted Shiratorizawa’s offer.

_I considered when Ushiwaka finally said ‘we’ and stepped off his high horse._

_Huh. Of course you did_ —an approving grin— _but not bad._

He might've been wanting to talk about Hajime, too. Because when he dozes off, he dreams about the two of them. Hajime climbing the wisteria tree and Tooru waiting below _‘to catch Hajime in his arms if he falls!’_. The warmth of a kiss, pressed onto his finger that was bitten by the beetle they're trying to catch, because they’ve run out of band-aids and Hajime _just_ needs Tooru to stop crying.

(But no—Tooru’s only crying because it's been getting harder and harder to find Hajime's touch).

To a noisy barrage of text messages, Tooru wakes up to a blue late-morning sky, clouds sparse but gray with a chance of rain. A jacket is draped over him, easing the cold away and keeping him warm much more than it should. Iwaizumi's nowhere to be seen.

It's 9AM, according to the clock on his phone, and Hanamaki had sent him around thirty messages thinly-veiled as insults and jokes asking where Tooru was. He smiles, still bleary from sleep but feeling somewhat more refreshed than he’s had in weeks. He’s about to write a comeback as sensible as his sleepy brain allows, when he reads the new name on his contact list.

_Iwaizumi Hajime_

_+81-9004004283_

 

 

* * *

 

 

The number hasn't been in use since at least twenty years, but it’s progress.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 **tooru  
** [??:??] Do you want to hear a story, Iwa-chan? _Message failed to send._

[??:??] There were two boys. Neither knew who’d found the other first. _Message failed to send._

 

 

* * *

 

 

[??:??] In a new beginning, a family began to settle from the frenzy of moving houses. The youngest son felt particularly antsy, because there was a new city to explore and a whole summer to spend. He pestered his sister to play, only appeased when she proposed to later check out a house she’d heard about from her old paranormal club. He didn't get _youkai hunting_ but he'd go with her, anyway, because sometimes it was just about passing time with someone that mattered. _Message failed to send._

[??:??] But at five he’d never learned to keep still (and maybe he never would). Grandfather and auntie-number-two entertained him with their weird stories, but it wasn't long before he’d run off to explore the new place. _Message failed to send._

[??:??] So onward he wandered, no destinations in mind, until he met a kitten with the oddest fur—really, it had the craziest tuft of hair on its head falling over one eye. He dubbed it _Kuroo_ for its swishing black tail. And it did things other cats had never done: it did not sprint away from the boy but _smirked_ at him, all _catch me if you can_ , and so he chased it all through the neighborhood until it circled him back close to home, jumping over the fence of a peculiar house he hadn't noticed before. _Weird_ , how he’d missed it, what with its overgrown garden crowded with thistles and tall grass and patches of blooms. _Message failed to send._

[??:??] He found the cat on one of a tree’s thicker branches and _swore_ it was grinning down at him. He stuck out his tongue, blew a raspberry, and looked around for ways to climb before he saw if Kuroo could mimic those gestures, too. When he glanced back up, Kuroo was floating on air as if someone were holding it tucked close to their chest. _Message failed to send._

[??:??] The air around it shimmered—you know, like how it does above a boiling pot of water, or when the sun shines too hot over asphalt. It took a vague shape, neither too large or too small, but something that fit. _Message failed to send._

[??:??] The boy kept looking up, and said, _“Hello_. _”_ _Message failed to send._

 

 

* * *

 

 

[??:??] (But no, not really. That wasn't how it went at all!) _Message failed to send._

[??:??] (The boy burst into tears, loud and ugly and messy. This was when another boy fell from the tree and begrudgingly tried to put a stop to it.) _Message failed to send._

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Do ghosts grow up?”

Lifting his head, Hanamaki doesn't even blink at the question, unbothered as usual. “Aren't you reviewing the Harada case?”

“But it's so _boring_.”

“Who are you and what’ve you done to Oikawa?”

“Depends,” Matsukawa chimes in.

To the last speaker, they just offer their combined inquiry, and Matsukawa Issei continues to gnaw at the end of his straw, nonchalant about it all, eyes heavy-lidded with dark circles. His untidy curls and easy stance broadcast _slacker_ , but the opposite is also true (at least where it matters). It's the first the photojournalist has time to sit with them, or eat in the cafeteria at all, since the month he’s been with Shiratorizawa. A heap of food and pleasant conversations later, as _pleasant_ as it can be when it’s the three of them, he’s already joined Hanamaki in double-teaming Tooru for the last hour.

“Depends?” Hanamaki asks. A smidge of _crème_ near his mouth dampens any threatening image brought on by his lazy smirk.

“Depends,” echoes Matsukawa, nodding.

Tooru clicks his tongue. “Stop flirting, you two,” he tuts, teasing. He falls sideways to bump into Hanamaki, hooking the crook of their elbows together in case Matsukawa might whisk his best friend away. “Did you mean ghosts _can_ grow up? Change?”

“Jealous you’re not invited to our date?” Matsukawa teases, too, and chuckles at Tooru’s pout; with this latest addition to Matsukawa’s jokingly insulting Tooru when he’d first greeted him, and all the repartees and quips he’s contributed so far, Hanamaki looks close to proposing to him.

Back to business, Matsukawa hums. “Ghosts don’t usually _change_. They’re dead. Most just do the same thing over and over again as they’re unable to form new memories. If they _do_ change, it’s often for the worse, becoming more violent or transforming into bad sorts of beings.”

Tooru flicks his wrist. “I know that.” In his peripherals, Hanamaki just gives Matsukawa a blank stare, mouthing a despaired _‘why’_. “I mean, can they grow up? Leave their haunting place, go to school, get a job, change appearances, become tangible—all those things, even _if_ they're only imagining it?”

“I was getting to that,” says Matsukawa, as if they're exchanging gossips. “though that's a pretty detailed scenario.” He arches his thick eyebrows, a new sign of interest other than his shit-eating grins. “Anyway, there are ghosts who haunt their specific persons. If they don't drive anyone mad, they may get so attached they become more human, for lack of better words. Though some end with the humans loving their ghosts too much and, finding no other ways to be together, choosing to join them prematurely.”

“Not much news there.”

Hanamaki stares up at the ceiling. “ _Why_.”

“But that's when the ghosts are doing the haunting,” Matsukawa points out. “Humans are capable of haunting, too. We create our own ghosts, after all.”

Tooru props his chin on top of a palm, fingers tapping his cheek in different rhythms as he hums, muses, conceals the rapidness inside his chest he can't identify. “You're saying that a reverse of it exists.”

“I didn't.” Matsukawa shrugs. He looks at Tooru like he knows. _Alarmingly perceptive_. Tooru just sneers in return. “That, I’ve never seen. I merely proposed a philosophical musing.”

“You said it like you _have_ seen things,” Hanamaki pipes up, skepticism marking his voice.

Matsukawa slurps at his soda through a straw. “Of course,” he deadpans. The graze of plastic against razor-sharp edges of aluminum grates at Tooru's ears. “I take photos of spirits as a side hobby.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 _“I’m six years old now, so I’m older than you!”_ Tooru says to the ghost boy named Hajime, standing not the tallest but still puffed up with pride.

He declares it in the voice that gets Hajime all huffy and exasperated, the one he uses to sweet-talk adults into getting him, and by extension Hajime, more treats. Hajime doesn't favor such things but he's there with Tooru, anyway, with his nice laughter and invisible smiles, and Tooru likes to think he's special to Hajime. Always the outwardly clingier one, he’d demand Hajime’s attention all the time he can, try to find his touch all the ways he can.

If Tooru could see his face, he thinks Hajime would have relatively thick eyebrows like most anime protagonists do, and how they'd knit together funnily at this particular tone, because Hajime is always good at making him laugh one way or another.

Still. The pride doesn't linger. Instead of feeling like he's won some competition, he feels left behind, _leaving Hajime behind_ , and it isn't what he wanted for his birthday or ever. Hajime has been five ever since he could remember. Tooru won't stay forever.

Still. _“No way_ , _”_ Hajime replies. _“I always get out you out of trouble so I’m clearly the more mature one.”_

Still. At seven, at eight, nine and ten and so on, Hajime always keeps up with Tooru. Sometimes _he_ ’s the one running ahead, smarter, brighter, kinder, the sort of boy who would be popular with the other boys in school. But rest assured, because he'll hold on to Tooru’s hand all the way through.

It is with this lingering thought that Tooru wakes up alone for a second time on the rooftop, this instance with the empty night sky overhead instead of blinding daytime, knees drawn to his chest, cheeks pressed against the jacket folded over them. It smells like dust and summer fields.

He wonders who'd haunted the other.

Droplets of water trail down his forehead, caught on his eyelashes, and force him to blink. He cranes his neck up to see what's brought him out of sleep, and greets the rain as it starts to fall.

 

 

* * *

 

 

On the nightrail home, Tooru takes a seat right beside the doors.

The overlapping beginning and end of day/nightshift, just mere hours apart, are always the busiest, and so Tooru usually finds himself without the luxury of his own seat. Like most passengers of such hours, he’d stand with one hand tight around a grab rail, jammed into whatever space available among salarymen and high school students whose club activities keep them late, and stay respectfully silent throughout the ride.

Except, today, an old man had taken one look at Tooru, kicked his dozing grandson out of the seat next to him, and ordered Tooru to sit down, patting the thin cushion like he was holding a judge’s gavel. _“This young man needs it more than your gutless ass,”_ he’d proclaimed, somehow still gesturing at a bewildered Tooru even with his arms crossed over his chest. Tooru had insisted he was fine—moving around was a habit of his and _he_ had no reason to believe there was something wrong with his _knee_ —but he’d ultimately surrendered to the glare.

He’d wondered if this was how Iwaizumi would be like, if he were an old man.

They’d talked. The drizzle that’d been pattering against the windows swirled into heavy downpour, cityscapes blurring into colorful neon streaks. Bright, cheerful ads played on compact boards attached from the ceiling in intervals.

Their train had come into an abrupt stop.

When the announcer’s voice had assured them the unexpected stop was due to inclement weather, and that it’d be a short one, the old man cursed. _“Things were much simpler before we had these shifts.”_ He’d yawned, tugging his baseball cap farther down and settling onto the backrest. _“Nice talking to you, kid.”_

(Of all the nicknames Tooru had got, _kid_ seemed the most unusual. He’d made note to ask why.)

( _Because you always act so childish_ , a voice in his mind had pointed out, sounding suspiciously like Iwaizumi’s. Or Hajime’s.

Because some ghosts have the penchant to haunt, but all—however long it takes—to be forgotten, replaced, in passing.)

And so it is on the nightrail home, from the seat right beside the doors, that Tooru spots his first spirit of the month.

A young boy in a kimono is rummaging through one of the upper compartments. Finding what he wants, he pulls away with a loud _‘ha!’_ , an umbrella grasped in too-small hands. He lands on his feet, his _geta_ clunking on metal. Too grounded by themselves and others’ trouble to notice such things, the people nearby just unconsciously give him space as he fumbles it open.

 _Snap._ He breaks the handle off like it’s toothpick, despite having the appearance of a grade-schooler, closes the umbrella again, and puts it over his head, covering his buzz cut. With a clawed finger he slices the dark green cloth in front of his face and parts it like curtains.

Tooru hums something lighthearted as the boy ambles up and down the aisle. “What a hat you’ve got there,” Tooru says, when the other passes by him.

The boy blinks at him. He points at himself. “You can see me?”

“Considering you’re the only one wearing such a striking hat, yes. Unless this is a dream—I’m quite the dreamer.”

“Ugh, I _know_ ,” the boy says. “Umbrellas these days aren’t as good as the old ones. They’ve got all these bendy metal spikes inside and some of them don’t have colors at all!” He pinches one to show Tooru. “Seriously, why’d you humans wanna put those over your head? What’s wrong with the old designs?”

“Believe or not, they’re better at keeping out the rain,” Tooru explains. “And I think the newer ones are more fashionable.”

The boy— _amefuri kozou_ —snorts. “Say it for yourself, uncle. Your wardrobe choices are _horrible_.”

“Uncle—hey! I’m _not_ old.”

“ _Old_ ,” the boy singsongs, sticking out his tongue, pulling down the skin under one eye. Briefly, Tooru wonders if this is how Iwaizumi feels around him, resisting the urge to wrap his hands around something—most likely someone’s neck or cheeks—and squeeze. “You wear _suits_.”

“This is my _work_ clothes. My personal choices are far better.”

“Nuh-uh. Not if you’re wearing that sweater.”

“You can’t really give fashion statements when you’re a nameless kid wearing a broken umbrella-hat.”

“I’m not _nameless_ —my name’s Takeru.” The _rainfall priest boy_ juts his lips, genuinely upset at the mention, but then lights up like he’s taken pride in having a name, and Tooru cracks a grin for him as well. Maybe like Hajime, Takeru has only one half of a name, but it is his nonetheless. “And I’m doing this partially for you guys.”

“Stealing umbrellas?”

“Yeah.” Takeru nods. “Y’all need to chill. Rain helps. Umbrellas get in the way.”

“But getting soaked by rain is quite inconvenient.”

To this, Takeru sneaks through the crowd, climbs over the person three seats down to grab for a window, flings it open, and lets the pouring rain jolt the unfortunate victim awake. He jogs back toward Tooru as the woman curses and hurries to shut the window. “See, now she doesn’t look like a zombie anymore. She’s got something to _right now_ to worry about, instead. Something she can fix.” He wrinkles his nose. “And she smells. She’ll probably, finally take a bath after this.”

Tooru quirks a brow, head tilted curiously. “So it’s like a reason to move?”

“Maybe. But I think adults should learn how to dance in the rain, too. It’s just fun.”

“You’re a weird kid.”

“Bleh. I’ve been around longer than you,” Takeru says, grinning, fingers clasped behind his head.

“If I’m an uncle, does that make you an old man?”

Taking off his umbrella-hat, Takeru lightly whacks Tooru with it, every bit of unaffected by Tooru’s indignant yelp. “You know I didn’t mean it like that,” he says around a huff.

“I take it back, you’re a _rude_ kid.” For the people sending weirded out looks their way, Tooru musters up a smile, dazzling enough to scramble their thoughts. He thought it could’ve been a dream, with how few payed them any attention. “What’s with the umbrellas, then? You collect them?”

“Eh. I don’t really know.” Takeru fixes his umbrella-hat in place once more. “I just feel like I gotta steal them. But I don’t know what to do after that so I might as well play.” He stares up at Tooru. “Are you looking for something, too, uncle?”

Tooru groans. “I told you I’m not old—I’m only twenty-eight this month! And I have a name, you know.”

“Mr. Lame?”

“How rude! And, no. It’s O—Tooru.”

“Otori?”

“Tooru.”

“Right. Weirdo.” Takeru scoffs. Twiddling with his hat, he grins something shy. “Do you only have part of a name, too? Is that what you’re looking for?”

“Hm? Why do you think that?” asks Tooru.

“I don’t know. You keep glancing around, like you expect something, or someone, to meet you right back.”

The announcement intercom switches on with a burst of static. A lady’s voice informs them the cause of delay has been found after a thorough search, and apologizes for the time it’ll take to repair it. At the predicted figure, most passengers give up the hush to groan and curse.

“Ne, Takeru, do you know there’s a tiny difference between _search_ and _look for_?”

“They mean the same thing,” Takeru argues. At the sound of his name, his grin brightens.

“Well, even when you’ve lost something very important to you, no matter how long it takes, you’ll forget them eventually. Not all—and maybe never all, because sometimes there’s just not enough time. But there are fleeting pieces and moments, and there are those to stay as well.

“Here’s the thing, though: if you can forget, you can also remember. The feel of dirt under your nails is like when you’d went bug-hunting, a glass jar in your hand because he was better at handling the butterfly net. The snow that gets inside your shirt, cold and electric, but you can only think how a certain warmth is missing from your side. The smell of _agedashi tofu_ you find yourself cooking, when you’ve never liked it that much anyway. The cicadas’ song in summer—the sky, too, because you first met him during that season, and it was also his favorite.

“And when you're reminded every time you look at yourself and the little and big ways he’d changed you, it's sort of hard to forget.”

Takeru frowns. “You’re weird, Tooru.”

“Well, the one I’m looking for, I wouldn’t be able to find him if I’m stuck in this train,” Tooru tells him. His smile tapers down to a lesser flourish, with none of the usual flaunt or fanfare, just something acute. “So, Takeru, can you ease up on the storm and lower the flood around the tracks?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 **Makki**  
[23:34] I CANT BELIEVE IT  
[23:34] He was perfect  
[23:34] HE INSULTED YOU  
[23:34] He teased oikawa tooru to blushing within two minutes of meeting you  
[23:34] And we just snuck away for early lunch like were partner in crimes already  
[23:34] And pranked kindaichi by deleting his browser history as hes doing research

[23:35] Kid mightve cried  
[23:35] Before he remembered the backup

[23:37] Hes showing me the photos he took  
[23:37] OF SPIRITS  
[23:37] I CANT SEE ANYTHING  
[23:37] BECAUSE THERES NOTHING THERE

[23:39] LIKE THERES THIS ONE OF A BENCH TAKEN FROM THE MIDDLE OF A CROWDED CROSSING  
[23:39] IT WAS RAINING AND A SEA TRANSPARENT UMBRELLAS REFLECTING ALL THE LIGHTS AND /AESTHETICS/  
[23:39] HE WAS WALKING AND HE SAW AN AME-ONNA OR SMTHG SITTING THERE  
[23:39] ITS A V V COOL PIC

[23:40] BUT THERES ONLY LIKE A 100 YRS OLD GRANDMA SITTING ON THE BENCH  
[23:40] AND MATTSUN SAID SHE WASN'T IT

[23:41] Hes laughing at me i knew it  
[23:41] Fuck he wears glasses did you know he wears fucking glasses

[23:42] Why do my friends have a thing for ghosts and spirits  
[23:42] Arent there enough humans to go around

[23:50] Oiky where r u  
[23:50] You traitor dont you leave me alone in trying times like this  
[23:50] Wait no  
[23:50] You both will just be gushing over this ughh

[23:51] Are you looking for iwaizumi again

[23:52] I swear if you skip lunch for him again ill push you over the rooftop  
[23:52] Pretty sure shiratorizawa is still the tallest building in tokyo

 

 _Screenshots added to_ Makki’s Big Gay Crisis _folder._

_July 9th, 2058._

 

 

* * *

 

 

“What’re you looking for, Iwa-chan?”

It is July 20th, 2058, and with his sights on Iwaizumi's back, Tooru asks a question insistent enough to catch.

After a moment, Iwaizumi lowers the binoculars. This is just one of the many times Tooru had brought them on the days they come across one another, yet the first they're gazing through them, often too engaged in conversations to think of the hustle beyond this rooftop and the two of them. Down and ahead through the lenses, and up and over other buildings trying to tower and make for Tokyo’s skyline, like they're a pair of deities perched on the clouds over the city they've conquered.

“Where did you get these?” Iwaizumi then asks, trailing his fingers down the sides. He thumbs at the hinge, the ridges on a focusing knob and at the ends of the barrels, and squints when he stumbles across irregular engravings.

“Datekougyou,” Tooru says as Iwaizumi goes to read the manufacturer's signature. “The stuff they make are delicately precise yet near unbreakable.”

“I knew there was a reason these could hold up so long under your care.”

“Iwa-chan! What are you saying?!”

“I don't know of any Datekou, though,” Iwaizumi murmurs. “I don't know much about binoculars, either, but there really is so much to see with these ones. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“They’re just ones of the cheaper models, you know,” Tooru says, “from _nine years ago_ , too. Iwa-chan is an old man. Really, what year do you live in?”

When Iwaizumi sighs out a wordless breath, like when you’re about to confess but end up letting go of the extra breaths you’ve stored, Tooru only catches _two_ and _thousand_ by the read of his lips, an improvement from the attempts before, and does not ask again today. He doesn't know yet what's keeping Iwaizumi tethered here, if it's strong as an steel anchor, illogical as fate’s red string, fragile as a thread.

They have a month left of summer. Tooru can't mess this up yet.

It's a mere selfish act. Because in some ways ghosts are just humans convinced they have a finite amount of time on countdown, a guillotine at their neck (and wouldn't it be understandably _upsetting_ to have voices that always go unheard), and simplest in their goals: make peace with old business, and find your deserved rest afterward. He should've been able to pry into Iwaizumi's unrest within days, manipulate him into resolving it as it was, and keep his story despite all propensity for such things to be transient.

But Tooru is a selfish person, and so he doesn't. Because Iwaizumi has not left the rooftop and traveled distances and made time out of moments and memories. He has not raced down roads and alleys just to indulge the urge to run, climb up mountains just to holler, or break into a school's swimming pool to confide in the bluish lights of small but sure ripples. Because he likes being with Iwaizumi.

He’s selfish, because while he's pinning this all on _Iwaizumi_ , it's just a glimpse of the things he wished he could've done with Hajime.

Because Hajime was restless, too, and Tooru had run out of time before he realized it, and Hajime had taken it upon himself to keep on moving.

The jacket Iwaizumi had loaned him is folded over one arm. Tooru brings it closer, tucks it to his chest, and takes a step back to lean against the door like he could prevent Iwaizumi from leaving early. He keeps expecting it to blink out of existence any time soon, as Iwaizumi might’ve forgotten about the phone number altogether; but he’d just told Tooru to hold on to it because Tooru _is stupid enough to come here without a jacket. It gets cold, dumbass_.

(Of the current Japanese population, 0.08% has the given name _Hajime_ —86,906 people, by the year 2058, and the statistics for the deceased going back to the 1950s is even higher.

All the _Hajime_ ’s Tooru had searched and found were never his.)

“What are you searching for, Iwa-chan?” Tooru muses.

Pushing back off the lean, he moves to stand beside Iwaizumi, thinks the question is just for himself by proxy, keeps his head up through it. They're a couple of meters from the entrance, close enough for the lights to still cast their shadows. Standing shoulder to shoulder, it's clear Iwaizumi is a few centimeters shorter than Tooru, but the breadth of his shoulders is wider, steadier.

He peers up in Iwaizumis space, right in front of the binoculars he’s viewing through, and lets out a chuckle when Iwaizumi startles a little at the surprise entry. “Iwa-chan,” Tooru singsongs, ignoring Iwaizumi’s growl as per usual, “what’re you looking at? I wanna see!”

Iwaizumi pushes him by a hand on the forehead. His touch is warm. “Your face is unpleasant as it is without magnification. Almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Such is the curse of my beauty.” Tooru raises a hand to his chest, jacket and all. “Hundreds of hearts have fallen for this face.”

“Then I wish them a painless reprieve from such horrors.”

He himself contradicts the words, studying Tooru's face as he says this, and he leans in, reaches out. “Told you to get more sleep, dumbass,” Iwaizumi says, poking at the grayish patch of skin below his left eye.

Tooru hums. “Who needs sleep when you’ve got make-up?” he argues cheerily. Even as he’s giving in just the slightest, he shakes off the thought of leaning into Iwaizumi's hand, seeking the the warmth that's more of a reassurance than anything, and slings one arm around his shoulders to compensate. Iwaizumi makes a face, but doesn't pull away. “Do you like it? The view from up here?”

The creases across wide forehead soften. He smiles. Something wistful. “Well. It's not bad.”

“That wasn't how it looked like when you were _gaping_ at everything. Those poor bugs, flying straight into your mouth and suffocating from your bad breath.”

He receives a light smack on the shoulder for that. “Shut up,” Iwaizumi says, over Tooru's dramatic gripes about how Iwa-chan’s wounded him. “And bugs don't do that. This is all just... beautiful, okay? I needed time to process it—to _believe_ it.”

“Hm?” Tooru tips his head to find Iwaizumi’s eyes, resists the automatic urge to gnaw at his bottom lip, and bites the inside of his cheek instead. “Does that mean Iwa-chan doesn't live around here, and has never gone sightseeing Tokyo?”

From the handful of ghosts he’s encountered, a few minor spirits aside, countable on one hand and dream-like as they are, Tooru knows interviewing ghosts is a treacherous thing. There are no logical procedures. Their presences are fickle from the start. As far as _yuurei_ go, Iwaizumi is an outlier: staying beyond _the witching hour_ , changing his appearance (and having a _pleasant_ one, at that), able to form new memories, fully opaque, _tangible_ , the jacket—

Tooru's impatient, relentless, self-important at times, petty (and it starts to sound like Hajime’s voice, at this point, fourteen years old and cracked from puberty)—and a myriad of other things that altogether have cost him (cases that could’ve had better endings; injuries he could've avoided receiving and inflicting; relationships he could've built; a dream he could've had.)

He’s always aimed too high. But it is also what gets him to where he is. (Maybe, he hasn't learned enough to change.)

So he lays this out for Iwaizumi. _I want to stay here_ , Iwaizumi had said, confused, _restless_ ; Iwaizumi Hajime should not be trapped here, and maybe it has only been a month since they'd met, but they’ve got another month left and Hajime— _Tooru’s Hajime_ —has always been the patient one between the two of them.

_Hajime is just your imaginary friend, Tooru. A surprisingly long-lasting one, yes, but you'll forget him eventually._

_Even your sister’s grown out her silly club._

_What's the goal of your obsession? You're chasing something that doesn't exist._

Let it not be said that Oikawa Tooru doesn't _try._

“It's just…” Iwaizumi starts, and trails off.

 _I’ll hear you_ , Tooru decides, and does not let go as the touch he’s leaning into lowers in temperature until he can feel the electrifying cold through Iwaizumi's clothes. _So just tell me what you're looking for._

He lets himself shiver. Iwaizumi's eyes flit to him.

“I—” Iwaizumi tries again, opening and shutting his mouth. He clears his throat. “I don't live here,” he says. “I’m just here because this is the highest place in Tokyo, and surrounded by all the lights and bustle, and he… He likes this sort of stuff, the person I’m looking for.”

It must be easy, Tooru thinks, to notice when his breathing halts, the steady condensations of his breaths on pause. “Oh.” His heart jumpstarts, a surreal mix of sharp-dull pain like wistfulness hammering against his ribcage. Like when he visits Hajime’s old grounds, or watcher a volleyball match that brings to mind a future he’d painstakingly built only to lose; and he wonders if it’s the sudden rush of blood that’s washing away the cold, or if it’s Iwaizumi’s warmth returning.

“Did you find him?” Tooru asks, because he’s never one to keep silent for long.

Iwaizumi shakes his head in small motions. “No,” he says, “I guess no matter how far I can see, I’m always just too far.”

“Well, if you can’t tell what you’ve seen, why don’t we go see for ourselves?”

At this, Iwaizumi turns to meet him, lost but searching, and always reaching. Because he’s never one to give up easily, either.

Quiet blankets over them for a while—for Iwaizumi, Tooru lets it; from Hajime he’d learned the value of speaking in glances and touches.

“You’ll just tag along, won’t you?”

It comes out more like a statement. Iwaizumi huffs around it, the tips of his ears a faint pink. Tooru’s lips quirk into a smile.

“I’ve been told that I’m impossible to get rid off. My presence is just that amazing.”

“You’re like a tick—you latch on, feast on the blood of your enemies, and are forever a nuisance to wash off.”

“Okay, because you’re being a total _meanie_ , I’m taking you to the places I like as well.”

Iwaizumi lets a small grin slip by, but it fades a bit, at the end.

“I don't…”

“I’ll even wear your _ugly_ jacket,” Tooru proposes. He scrunches up his nose (knowing Iwaizumi thinks it's funny when he make stupid faces, anyway). “Nightshift Tokyo is _cold_.”

Iwaizumi snorts. “Are you sure that's not just you? And you said you like winter.”

_I like winter for the same reason you like summer: there's a certain warmth; an old-threaded blanket, a hot cup of chocolate, the sun, a person, and you know they’ll be there for you._

“I’m pure as the untrodden white snow—”

“Oh gods, stop.”

“—a _beautiful_ , unique snowflake—”

“Snow on the streets gets trampled on and dirty, you _dumbass_.”

“—and the people _love_ me,” Tooru finishes with this, merciful enough not to kill Iwaizumi by worsening the bout of laughter he’s under right now. He feels himself smile from end to end at the sound of Iwaizumi’s voice, his brightening light, the warmth of him all, and itches to just reach out a hand for him to take.

But. _Not yet._ He takes a step back, turning on his heels and walking toward the entrance. When Tooru looks back at him, Iwaizumi’s chuckle has died down, a neutral frown set on his face. The air isn’t as cold.

Tooru waits by the door, a remnant of something old not yet replaced, with its metal key and lack of automated sensors and need to be physically pushed and pulled. Hand curls around the handle, and Oikawa Tooru waits.

Quite abruptly, he remembers the first time he and Hajime had caught a flying insect. They’d snuck away from _Obon_ , just because they were adventurous and could, and found a dragonfly behind the bushes separating the soundful, luminous festivities from the small patch of forest beyond. He’d been mesmerized by its translucent wings, and hid frustrated tears when he yet again scared another creature away.

Hajime had insisted it was _his_ fault, _ghost and all_ , but Tooru knew it was a while lie, because animals _loved_ Hajime and Kuroo was probably the only one who wasn't afraid of Tooru. Following his family's call, Tooru had went back to the festival, Hajime choosing to stay behind a little longer.

Some time in the night, Hajime had bumped into Tooru when there was no one else to see, holding a glass jar with a cheesecloth cover, the same dragonfly from before buzzing inside. His voice was a tad shy when he’d shoved it into Tooru’s hands as he grumbled about things Tooru couldn’t recall now. And after Tooru had finished being teary-eyed and hugging Hajime to maybe the second death, he insisted on holding hands. _Nevermind what others might see_ , so long as they knew the other was there, hand in hand, for the rest of the night. For whatever may come their way.

Now, Tooru doesn't count the passing time. It could’ve been ten seconds, ten minutes. It could've been an hour. His knee starts to ache from standing still too long, and he goes to put on Iwaizumi's jacket when even the summer breeze is getting restless.

Lost in reminiscence and back from it, Tooru holds his head up to the sound of sneakers on concrete.

Iwaizumi stands in front of him, now wearing a light blue hoodie with a jean jacket over it, hands hidden in his dark slacks’ pockets, shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot. Tooru silently makes fun of his fidgeting, wondering if he's nervous or _excitedly_ restless, and offers a bright grin when Iwaizumi just shoots him a glare like he knows what Tooru's thinking.

(“What if I missed him?” Iwaizumi asks by a hesitant glance, a tightness in his jaw, a millimeter step back. “The person I’m looking for. What if he went to this place while I was gone?”

Tooru keeps him in his sight. _Iwaizumi Hajime._ Something hopeful. “What if he’s out there?”)

He goes to open the door for the both of them. He crosses the landing, takes the first step down the stairs beyond, and turns to Iwaizumi with a smile and heart beating a thousand mile. This is when Tooru reaches out his hand.

This is when Iwaizumi takes it in his.

 

**Author's Note:**

> there might be more of this 'verse but hngkmavjq this is it, for now ^^ let me know what you think?
> 
> [tumblr](https://astersandstuffs.tumblr.com/) // [fic post](https://astersandstuffs.tumblr.com/post/162453230599/late-summer-early-autumn-relationship)


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